(Phys.org) —Biomedical engineering researchers at the University of Arkansas have encapsulated two types of protein antigens in chitosan and demonstrated that the combined material enables or improves three ...

All too often, when a person takes a pill full of a potent and effective drug, the drug passes straight through the body, not reaching the organ where it is needed—a waste of money and inconvenient if it ...

(Phys.org)—Winemakers have long known that blending different grape varietals can favorably balance the flavor characteristics of the wine they produce. In the future, makers of advanced biofuels might ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- In the human world of manufacturing, many companies are now applying an on-demand, just-in-time strategy to conserve resources, reduce costs and promote production of goods precisely when ...

Bacteria use various appendages to move across surfaces prior to forming multicellular bacterial biofilms. Some species display a particularly jerky form of movement known as "twitching" motility, which is made possible by ...

Researchers from Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) have broken one of the major roadblocks on the path to growing transplantable tissue in the lab: They've found a way to grow the blood vessels and capillaries ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- We and all other organisms must constantly grapple with bacteria. Whether for a necessary symbiosis or an infection, carbohydrate structures on cell surfaces play an important role in the ...

Scientists have combined chemistry and biology research techniques to explain how certain bacteria grow structures on their surfaces that allow them to simultaneously cause illness and protect themselves from the body's defenses.

Secretion of polysaccharides from the micro community living within the sea ice stick organism together and forms greater particles introducing a rapid transport of carbon to the seafloor. New research now ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Just like our roads, there is a lot of traffic within the cells in our bodies, because cell components, messenger molecules, and enzymes must also be brought to the right places in the cell. One of these ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- A whole microcosm of various bizarrely shaped life forms opens up when you look at diatoms, the primary component of ocean plankton, under a microscope. The regularly structured silica shells of these tiny ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- At a former uranium mill-tailing site in Rifle, Colorado, scientists are studying how microbes interact with minerals and metals to better understand processes that can help remediate the ...

Polysaccharide

Polysaccharides are long carbohydrate molecules, of repeated monomer units joined together by glycosidic bonds. They range in structure from linear to highly branched. Polysaccharides are often quite heterogeneous, containing slight modifications of the repeating unit. Depending on the structure, these macromolecules can have distinct properties from their monosaccharide building blocks. They may be amorphous or even insoluble in water.

When all the monosaccharides in a polysaccharide are the same type, the polysaccharide is called a homopolysaccharide or homoglycan, but when more than one type of monosaccharide is present they are called heteropolysaccharides or heteroglycans.

Examples include storage polysaccharides such as starch and glycogen, and structural polysaccharides such as cellulose and chitin.

Polysaccharides have a general formula of Cx(H2O)y where x is usually a large number between 200 and 2500. Considering that the repeating units in the polymer backbone are often six-carbon monosaccharides, the general formula can also be represented as (C6H10O5)n where 40≤n≤3000.